


Precession

by ohemdee



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Camping, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Booker - Freeform, Nile Freeman-centric, Roadtrip, in between missions, the stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26004082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohemdee/pseuds/ohemdee
Summary: They’d bought a little tent trailer and a beat up F150 that Andy paid cash for when they landed in Calgary, and the team hit the road. Nicky and Joe immediately claimed the back and crashed out, limbs entangled with each other’s, and Joe’s nose pressed against Nicky’s hair. Nile tried to subtly watch them in the rear view mirror, and tried very hard not to think about a millennia of relationships.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 43
Kudos: 384





	Precession

**Author's Note:**

> [“The precession of the Earth's axis has a number of observable effects. First, the positions of the south and north celestial poles appear to move in circles against the space-fixed backdrop of stars, completing one circuit in approximately 26,000 years. Thus, while today the star Polaris lies approximately at the north celestial pole, this will change over time, and other stars will become the "north star". In approximately 3200 years, the star Gamma Cephei in the Cepheus constellation will succeed Polaris for this position.”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession).

They left Booker on a riverbank in London, and immediately hit the ground running. Smuggling rings in Bolivia, drug runners in Denmark, human traffickers in Canada that Nile felt no guilt about gunning down. She didn’t jump out of any more buildings. She did die several times- nothing creative, simple gunshot wounds and stabbings. At least no one sliced her throat open again. The memory of her first death was still fresh in her mind and she didn’t particularly feel like reliving it.

She didn’t ask, and none of them ever said, but Nile suspected the continuous jobs were a bit more than just Copley proving his worth. Andy forgot to watch her right side more often than she should, and Nile regularly found herself sliding into the empty space left there. Joe turned on soccer matches, and turned them off. Nicky refused to teach her any French, even when it would have been really useful in Bordeaux after she drew the short straw to go and get supplies.

But they all fell into a rhythm, and Nile tried to fill the gap as best she could, although it was hard to replace 200 years of practice. Joe took a couple of shots that he shouldn’t have needed to, and Nicky more than once had to get an arm in between an assailant and Andy. With every mission they got better though, and Nile was so exhausted that she barely had time to think about what she was missing out on.

Which brought them to Alberta. Copley told them to lay low for a few days while he worked on some data scrubbing that he’d overlooked the previous week. Relax was a word that Nile hadn’t heard in more than three months, and while she was grateful for the respite from the constant flow of travel, shoot, get shot, it also meant she had time to process, well, everything.

They’d bought a little tent trailer and a beat up F150 that Andy paid cash for when they landed in Calgary, and the team hit the road. Nicky and Joe immediately claimed the back and crashed out, limbs entangled with each other’s, and Joe’s nose pressed against Nicky’s hair. Nile tried to subtly watch them in the rear view mirror, and tried very hard not to think about a millennia of relationships.

Andy didn’t take her eyes off the road for even a moment. “Don’t. It’ll eat you up inside.”

“What?” Nile jerked out of her reverie.

“Thinking about people. It’s a bad path to go down this early.”

Nile stared through the cracks in the windshield, watching the road distort through them in front of her. “Is that what happened to Booker?”

Andy didn’t reply. The road continued on. 

Eventually they stopped at a little gas station in a town that Nile missed the name of, and the Rockies started to make their presence known. She’d crossed them a few times, but only by plane, and it was different driving right up to their feet. Andy had disappeared into the store, and both Joe and Nicky had gotten out to stretch their legs in the parking lot. Nile propped her feet up on the dash and tried to scroll through radio stations for something half decent. News, more news, country music, news in French. She turned it back off. Andy came back out, a few bottles of water and a bag of snacks in her hands and nodded to Joe and Nicky across the lot. She raised one eyebrow when she caught sight of Nile’s feet on the dashboard, but didn’t say anything. Nile felt the truck rock as the two men climbed back into their positions, and waited for Andy to start to back up.

“What you said before.” Andy took her sunglasses off and met Nile’s gaze. “Yeah, I guess you could say that’s what happened to Booker. He just. Got so caught up in what he had lost, he just kept poking at the wound, never gave it a chance to heal.”

Joe clapped Andy on the shoulder, and looked at Nile. “We’ve all lost people. But we are not alone.”

“Love comes in many ways.” Nicky sounded like he’d shoved the entire chocolate bar Andy had tossed into the backseat in his mouth, which he probably had.

Andy reached up and squeezed Joe’s hand where it still rested on her shoulder. “I am happy you’re here though, Nile. I hate third wheeling for these two.”

Nile grinned and Andy started the truck and Nicky protested loudly.

“Where are we going, boss?” Joe seemed to just be taking in their surroundings.

“Camping.” 

Nicky groaned. “I hate camping. We used to live like it was camping all the time in the old days, and there is nothing wrong with modern plumbing.”

Joe nodded his agreement. “The Dark Ages were rough in Europe.”

“Copley said get off the grid, so that means no cameras. And every city is full of cameras these days.” Andy looked at them in the rear view mirror. “Stop being dramatic.”

“I just like showers.” Nicky sprawled himself over Joe. “Warm showers.”

Nile giggled at their antics, which seemed to cheer Nicky up considerably.

The mountains encroached on them, really started to tower overhead and Nile couldn’t help but learn forward in her seat to try and keep the peaks in view.

“Have you seen these mountains before, Nile?” Nicky leaned in between the front seats, eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Just flown over them.”

“I have seen all the mountains in the world, and they are all beautiful in their own way. It doesn’t get old, I can promise you.”

“Like the stars and Nicky’s eyes.” Joe grinned when Nicky turned back to face him.

“Sap.”

Andy and Nile rolled their eyes, and smiled when they caught each other in the act.

Andy pulled off the highway, and the side road quickly became a gravel road that led to their campsite.

“Home sweet home for the next week.” She carefully backed in, making sure the license plates faced only the woods surrounding them.

Both men jumped out of the truck and quickly started to unhook the trailer, while Andy grabbed supplies out of the box. She tossed Nile an empty jug.

“Should be a pump just down the road. I’ll start the fire.”

Nile grumbled a bit about being given the heavy job, but it was half hearted. A cool breeze was blowing down off the mountains, and it felt good to know they were the only people around, at least for a safe distance. The constant vigilance, the fighting and reconnaissance of the last few weeks had taken a toll on all of them.

The world's slowest pump took Nile a solid twenty minutes to fill the jug with, but when she got back the smell of fire and wood-cooked food greeted her. Nicky was losing to Andy at cards, based on his expression (Andy was unreadable), and Joe was tossing another log into the flames.

An overwhelming sense of warmth rushed up inside her at the scene, and she tripped over her own feet, just a moment of unsteadiness before she righted herself, smiled at Nicky when he glanced over at her, and lifted the jug onto the table. She settled herself into a seat on Andy’s right and stole a piece of chocolate from their betting pool in the middle, much to their protest.

Dinner was delicious as ever (turns out a few thousand years of cooking means someone can make a pretty decent meal out of anything), and just as the last vestiges of sunshine disappeared beyond the mountains, Nile found herself yawning.

“You didn’t sleep at all on the way down, go to bed.” Joe gently shoved her away from her dishwashing attempts. “I’ll finish.”

The tent trailer smelled faintly of mildew, and there were only two beds, which meant Nile was sharing with Andy and approximately 30 weapons, but it was cosy and the sheets seemed clean which was a lot more than she expected. She changed into an approximation of sleeping clothes (still acceptable fight clothes), tucked three knives along the edge of the bed and one into the hanging netting above it, then grabbed her new handgun that Nicky had stolen off someone somewhere and put it within reach above her head.

That all taken care of, she stretched out, luxuriated in the space for the moment, and let the murmurs of the voices outside lull her into sleep.

The Dream didn’t always wake her these days, but the terror and ferocity of Quỳnh beating herself against her cage pulled Nile to consciousness. She was still alone in bed, and carefully looked across the trailer. Nicky and Joe were still asleep, Joe in his usual position, with just his hair visible from where he had shoved his face into Nicky’s neck. Nile slowly got up, tiptoed to the door, and flinched as it creaked. Nicky gave her a little wave from under Joe’s arm. She waved back to settle him and stepped out into the cool night.

Andy has let the fire die down to just embers, which just barely lit her from below. She glanced over her shoulder and then patted the chair next to her, which Nile took gratefully. Andy looked up and Nile followed her gaze.

The stars were breathtaking. The swirl of the Milky Way lit a bright swath across the sky, filled with more light and sparkle than Nile had ever seen in her life.

“Humans have made so much light. There’s not many places left like this.” Andy smiled a bit sadly. “I remember when it was always like this, everywhere. Millions of lights. The stars were different then.”

When Nile looked at Andy, she didn’t always see her age. It was hard with any of them to truly understand what they had seen, how long they had been. But fire lit from below and starlit from above, Andy seemed ancient.

“People think the stars are forever unchanged. But everything changes. We had these old maps, the first time we tried to cross the ocean. But they were so old, guiding us by stars that had moved. Or I guess, we had moved past them. We got so lost. Nicky and Joe were so mad. They were newer then, only a few hundred years.”

Nile looked at the constellations again. “I didn’t know that was a possibility.”

Andy stretched her legs out, warming her feet next to the fire. “Tell me about it, kid.”

“I don’t think I’d mind, seeing the stars move. I mean, who else has?”

They sat in silence for a while longer, and watched the fire burn itself out.

“Andy?” Nile took her head tilt as ‘I’m listening’. “Are the old stars still there? Or can you not see them anymore?”

Andy laughed quietly. “Nothing changes that much. Come on.” She pointed to the table. “Lay down, I’ll show you where they went.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr at [oh-emdee](http://oh-emdee.tumblr.com/). I would love to receive prompts!! Please feed me ideas!
> 
> As well if you’ve never had a chance to visit a dark sky sanctuary I really do highly recommend it. In this story I envision the crew in Waterton Park, but there’s lots of sanctuaries and parks all over the world!


End file.
